Sunday was a very calm day after this series of incidents, as the cessation of pranks and other facetious enchantments stopped the ambiance of chaos reigning from the start of the week. Alexandra profited from the sunny day to go running outside the castle. The surrounding of the Black Lake provided an excellent course, the grass was green and no student came bothering her. Maybe they were all allergic to physical effort? As she did her jogging taking great care to maintain a safe distance between her and the Forbidden Forest, her eyes lied on the Quidditch Pitch, unoccupied for the moment. The tryouts for each team had been delayed to the next week, given the chaos reigning in the school. Well, that and the fact no one with a neuron in his skull was tempted to fly when at every moment a member of another house could "prank" you when you were unarmed and at an height of at least forty feet in the sky. Perhaps it was her nature to be naturally suspicious but Quidditch looked like the perfect way to divide even further the four Houses of Hogwarts.
"Not like it is my problem." Said Alexandra Potter out loud, contemplating the sun illuminate the thousand-year old fortress in this beautiful September morning. "Surviving the madness of the students and the teachers is more than enough for me. Let the teachers deal with the school problems, it's what they're paid for."
In the years to come, Alexandra would remember this moment, when no darkness or cloud was visible in the horizon. And wonder how naive she had been.
Second Round
5th October 1991, Hogwarts, Scotland
After the intervention of Dumbledore brought back a relative calm to Hogwarts, the days seemed to pass at supersonic speed for Alexandra Potter. She was still friendless as ever, and the looks of fear, anger or ignorance were present in quantities, but Alexandra had decided to let it go. If people were not willing to make the distinction between her and her father, then she had obviously no interest in befriending said persons. She had been alone at Privet Drive and in primary school, it wasn't exactly a new situation. In the meanwhile, the school year passed.
History class under Professor Binns and Tiroflan had become officially rest time or nap time, depending on the person which spoke about it. No one except Hermione Granger, the most motivated student of Hogwarts, could figure what Binns was muttering in his ghostly ramblings. No one, and this included the aforementioned Hermione Granger, could manage to motivate Professor Tiroflan into teaching History. The man was simply too lazy, period. Alexandra and the rest of Ravenclaw House studied the history books on their own free time, the Hufflepuffs used the archives left by countless generations of Hufflepuffs predecessors to study, the Slytherins stole or copied the information from the two first Houses, and the Gryffindors did nothing. Except Granger of course.
The same situation repeated itself in Defence Against the Dark Arts class. Professor Quirell passed his time stuttering and inventing fictional stories of his supposed-adventures in the Balkans, and Professor Devkins losses of memory were worsening. Sometimes, the latter even forgot he was a teacher for goodness' sake, and the former was ridiculous with his stuttering and his turban. Three days ago, Quirell had finally agreed to teach them a basic offensive spell, the Flipendo Charm. Alexandra, who knew the spell for more than half a month now, had understood nothing of the teacher's explications. The Defence Against the Dark Arts Professors were useless, so it was self-study, self-study and self-study. Contrary to History, the Gryffindors showed more enthusiasm to learn and improve their repertoire of hexes, although to what extent the performance of Neville Longbottom in this course boosted them was unknown.
Potions, on the opposite side, had rapidly become the bane of the first-years existence. Contrary to what Alexandra had expected, Professor Snape had not improved his manner of teaching the Ravenclaws-Hufflepuffs after the first session. A short tutorial had been given on the different safety measures to brew in class. That was all. There was no explanation or lesson how to brew dangerous substances: on the best of days they had a short lecture and the instructions to brew the potion on the blackboard. On a bad day (which had already happened once), the children had to search the instructions themselves in their book. No help was forthcoming; either Snape passed his time grading their essays during their brewing times, or he walked around them, making awful remarks and lapidary comments, criticising the first-years for every mistake they did, no matter how minor and unimportant it was. Snape had not the behaviour and the patience to be a teacher, and it showed. About half of the Ravenclaw-Hufflepuff first-years were outright failing this class for the moment. The only consolation was that they did better than the Gryffindors. If Potions class was a moment of worry for the Ravenclaws, it was pure hell for the Lions. Any abuse directed towards the Eagles and the Badgers by Snape was multiplied ten times by Snape when it came to the Gryffindors. Incorrect answers removed House points by the dozens. Leo Black was often expulsed before the end of the class for having the temerity to answer back to Snape. House Slytherin was supported, complimented, trained by their own Head of House (some rumours said Professor Snape taught his class beforehand how to brew the Potion of the day). Snape's favourite, the whining Draco Malfoy, took no greater joy than throw diverse volatile products in the cauldrons of his rivals and enemies, as well as his housemates who risked making a better Potion than him at the end of the hour. The children belonging to House Gryffindor were denigrated and given awful marks, whether they deserved them or not. Sometimes, it was a wonder there had been no deaths, although Nigel Wolpert visited the infirmary every Friday.
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